How do I deal with a creationist family member?

Hooah,Certainly it is always risky to try and diagnose a relationship over the internet so certainly I may be way off base here, but...When I read your post I can't help but projecting myself and people I know into your situation. What I would try to do here is decide what my goal is. You have a history with this person and it seems this history is possibly getting in the way of communicating. Is your history simply going to make any real communication difficult to the point where these discussions become mostly opportunities to inflict pain on each other?Seems one critical piece of information would be, are you able to communicate well with her when the topics are not religious?It is unclear are you together as a couple and living in the same house?Were I in your place I think I would consider the tact of exploring religion together. The difficulty would be then if you could find avenues where religion was actually explored rather than dogmatically taught.

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It doesn't sound to me that he's trying to proselytize her, it sounds like he's more concerned about his child, and that she won't let him have any influence over the child. I'm sure, in other circumstances, they could leave the topic aside, or part ways, but with a child, the situation becomes more tangled.

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Well, wouldn't an easier approach be to not couch discussions in terms 'teaching his anti-religious views'? If she's seeing religion primarily as an emotional issue and not a scholarly pursuit, then she's probably compartmentalized religion to apply to only part of her world-view. It seems counter-productive to force her to apply religion to more aspects of her life by forcing her to draw comparisons. Why make religion the fight if it isn't that much of a day to day influence in her life?Were I raising a child at this point I would spend my efforts on math, logic, and science basics. Giving the children the ability to evaluate issues themselves will more than pay off down the road and perhaps I'd even manage to raise a kid who thinks that becoming a rapper or having a huge Sweet 16 party equals success. At the very least they'd likely have the tools to undo much of any damage I'd do in raising them.

If you're talking about Catholicism isn't there less reason to draw a line in the sand? Catholicism has all manner of wiggle room with not only evolution, but science in general.If she's the light version of a Catholic, then you're looking at baptism, communion, and (if she doesn't forget about it later) confirmation. I wouldn't think it would be that hard to find basic science books written by Catholics that left out the dogma. I'd be surprised if they actually dwelled on religious matters anywhere near the rate of creo books. I could certainly be wrong about this, but I imagine the science books used in Catholic schools are not that different than those used in public ones.The hardest way to accomplish (what I presume) your goal to be would be to make it 'my beliefs' vs 'hers'. Wouldn't it be far easier to just find some progressive priest to explain that Catholicism isn't anti-science to your child or if you really want to push it, to your partner?

With the exception of a couple of years, since the late 1980's.